1st Edition
The Routledge Guidebook to Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra
The Routledge Guidebook to Nietzsche’s This Spoke Zarathustra is an engaging introduction to this rich and provocative philosophical text. Nietzsche is one of the most influential and yet least understood philosophers of the nineteenth century. This is also true of his self-proclaimed magnum opus, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The work has been widely influential but is still far from being understood. On the one hand, the principal aims and even the genre of Zarathustra remains unclear. On the other hand, the work expresses, in poetic fashion, some of Nietzsche’s most important, controversial, and enigmatic doctrines: the Uebermensch, the eternal recurrence of the same, and the will to power. This guidebook provides an overview and a fresh interpretation of these themes, a chapter-by-chapter reading of the text, and an overarching argument that Zarathustra should be understood as Nietzsche’s own three-act Greek tragedy followed by a satyr play.
The Routledge Guidebook to Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra is essential reading for students of nineteenth-century philosophy, German philosophy, and intellectual history, and suitable for anyone studying Nietzsche’s most famous text for the first time.
1. Introduction to Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra
2. The Tragedy and Satyr Play of Zarathustra
3. Thus Spoke Zarathustra I
4. Thus Spoke Zarathustra II
5. Thus Spoke Zarathustra III
6. Thus Spoke Zarathustra IV
7. The Philosophical Significance of Zarathustra
Appendix: The Works of Friedrich Nietzsche.
Bibliography
Index
Biography
Matthew Meyer is a Professor of Philosophy at The University of Scranton, USA. He is the author of Reading Nietzsche Through the Ancients: An Analysis of Becoming, Perspectivism, and the Principle of Non-Contradiction (2014), and Nietzsche's Free-Spirit Works: A Dialectical Reading (2019). With Paul Loeb he is editor of Nietzsche's Metaphilosophy: The Nature, Method and Aims of Philosophy (2019).
"Thus Spoke Zarathustra is fascinating and beautiful, but difficult to understand. Matthew Meyer appreciates both the scientific and aesthetic dimensions of Nietzsche's philosophy, and provides a clear and helpful interpretation. He makes a convincing argument that Nietzsche structured Zarathustra like a three-act Greek tragedy followed by a satyr play. Meyer's interpretive insights will advance scholarly understanding of Zarathustra, and his accessible presentation will help ordinary readers better understand Nietzsche's masterpiece." - Neil Sinhababu, National University of Singapore
